Old Issues

Conor got a cheap thrill from some of my Amazing Collection of computer Toys that I brought to the BarCampCork III meet up. I was more than happy to bring them out for an airing, although my back, and Walter’s will be thanking us later for our efforts. I would definitely offer (like in free beer) the collection to any group who would display, preserve and teach the history of these (and other) machines from my collection. And I support Conor’s idea of a computer/science/technology museum in Cork. After all, just because the UCCComputer Science Department refused the offer, doesn’t mean that citizens of The Republic of Cork should be denied the gift.

I’ve been in afoul mood, depressed, cranky and touchy. Just the thing for a Cranky Blogger. Between the recession, NAMA, Lousy Politicians, crummy weather I’m just about dun in. And to top it all off, no one seems to want to Twitter @querynet, contribute Ideas to ideaforcasting.com, or store thoughts at @fleetthoughts. When I have an Idea, why do the seem Poor. Hope the Cork Open Beer manages to improve my mood!

If you need any further reason to think of Iraq as George Bush’s ‘Vietnam War‘. Just read this article 19,000 insurgents killed and remember that not a single body has been confirmed by independent counts. Just like in Vietnam, the actual body counts were always inflated by several orders of magnitude. So applying the same rule, read 19,000 as 1,900 tops, which is smaller than the number of coalition force causalities, Dead causalities, not just the 25,000 Wounded coalition forces.

We know that the Bush family has had dealing with the Iranian government for many years. In fact many Illegal dealing with them. There is more than a little tin hat theory that this current Iranian ‘Crisis’ is yet another Bush deal to have a ready enemy for the fall elections. Something to scare the grumbling herd of GOP voters back into the republican camps and ensure at least some republicans get reelected and to prevent one or both houses of congress do not fall into Democratic hand.

Suspicions about a deal between the Reagan campaign and Iran over the hostages have circulated since the day of President Reagan’s inaugural, when Iran agreed to release the 52 American hostages exactly five minutes after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office. Later, as it became known that arms started to flow to Iran via Israel only a few days after the inauguration, suspicions deepened that a secret arms-for-hostages deal had been concluded….

There is, however, widespread agreement on three points: William Casey was a key participant: the Iranian representatives agreed that the hostages would not be released prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 4…At least five of the sources who say they were in Paris in connection with these meetings insist that George Bush (senior ed) was present for at least one meeting

…suspicions deepened that a secret arms-for-hostages deal had been concluded. Five years later, when the Iran-contra affair revealed what seemed to be a similar swap of hostages for arms

But the administration has thwarted every effort in the courts or in Congress to win a monetary judgment against Iran, even as other victims of Iranian-linked terrorism have secured hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation

…the Bush administration intervened, saying the suit violated an agreement with Iran that had secured the hostages’ release…

To make more of a point, the current President of Iran, was one of the Iranian kidnappers. Interesting circularity here, don’t you think.

The company I work for does teleworking, and it’s expanding after a decision was made NOT to build another building, or to rent more office space. It really turns out that the only real impedement to a successfull teleworking of staff overflow isn’t the technology, it the perceptions of Management. The distrust of the employees to not fiddle when they should be working.

I have found that usually I get more work done while working from home. There are so many less distractions here. I don’t have to listen to the general office noise. And I take shorter lunch breaks. Usually only a few minutes long. Management should try it for themselves, it works.

And since the customer is as far away from here as at the office. It makes no difference.

The current talk about Iraq appears to be civil war, and how to prevent it. In reality you cannot prevent of a Civil war, you can only provide a when it will happen. Every democracy has had to have a Civil war. It is almost a requirement, whenever a passionate desire to control one’s own fate using the tool of government overcomes the ability to argue the points coherently is breached, then civil war will result. The flash point is subject matter. In many of the western democracies the passion is over an Ideal, a principal formed in the popular thoughts of the population. In iraq the subject is religion, a subject swimming in passion. There will be a civil war, can’t be stopped, therefore the goal goal will have to be, when it will be allowed to happen.

The most probable course of action will have to be providing an accommodating framework for all current parties to form a point of intersection. A meeting place where a basic common grown can be formed. In Iraq, this common ground will be a very small place. And it will not look western, in any, way, shape, or function. The attempt to ‘push’ western shaped organizations into a islamic world will not work. Unless a common foundation, comfortable to all participants, can be built, democratic organizations can not be built.

This has been the misguided adventure of the Neo-Cons. Their belief that the western foundations, the western common ground, is the same as an Islamic one, and can be easily overlaid onto a Islamic one. It is misguided, build a foundation, then let the organizations build on solid ground. The Muslin community must be allowed to build it for themselves. In some perceptions, the ‘terrorist’ in Iraq are no different than the Minutemen of the American Revolution. The British at that time called them ‘terrorist’ also.

And NO, it will not look like, nor act like a western democracy. And shouldn’t, It’s their country. Not, the one that the Neo-Cons would have and control. After all, the Neo-cons are only attempting to provide the illusion of democracy, hence the support of the Egyptian ‘Democracy’ which was fundamentally the same one that existed under Hussein in Iraq. The only difference was Hussein did not take direction from the Neo-cons. At least not recently, after all they put him into power in the first place. Put like Mary Shelly’s monster, it got out of control.

It’s about the Oil! and the power that oil provides, Energy, Economic and Political.

Impeach Bush and his Neo-Con masters.

(Funny didn’t he seem like a puppet on a string accepting responsibility during his speech)

Katrina, may have been a natural disaster, but it was a predictable one. And I’m not talking about the death, destruction and economic. It is a disaster for the Republican agenda, and again I’m not talking about the current administration and the current crop of politicians either.

The Republican agenda has been the systematic destruction of the federalist, centralist government of the United States of America otherwise known as the U.S.A. The disaster has been exposing this agenda too early. Well before the planned execution of the victim, the Federal Government. This might sound a little too far into the arena of the tin hat brigade. But the fundamental has been to push control of the government back into the state house. States Rights!

A world where the Federal government only has the power to regulate interstate commerce, and provide for the common defense, and very little else. The civil war, which was fought over this goal (not over slavery) failed in this pursuit and is only now coming to fruition in the form of an internally crippled, bureaucratically corrupt, and functionally inept federalist structure.

The fundamental goal of the Republicans was to demonstrate to the world that a Federal government was flawed. The failure of FEMA while appearing to be a failure of the government was in fact a victory for the Republicans. A further proof that the Federalist system does not work.

The disaster for the Republicans has been that it has happened when they are in power. If the the plan was to work, it was necessary to be the responsibility of the Democrats. Or any other person or party other than the Republicans. Katrina came too early, caused too much destruction.

But part of the demonstration, was to show that Republican controlled states like Florida, could manage, while a Democratically dominated ones like Louisiana could not.

They are likely to succeed in any case, as the Republicans are still in control of the Mass Media. Controlled as they are by big business. There is little information being disseminated that provides the true ‘Big Picture’. And what there is, it deliberately spun into a muddle to be interpreted as needed and to generally confuse the general population.

Another tenet of the Federalist government was a free and independent reporting of the news, another target of the Republicans. A goal mostly accomplished, with perhaps the oversight of the internet. A goal still firmly in their sites. With goals of censorship of the Internet content being then next element on their agenda.

And with all this, do you think Science has been excluded, far from it. It falls into the same category as truth, as the truth from their perspective is something to be managed and subject to interpretation. Redefinition, refinement to provide a more productive result.

But back to the disaster, the trouble with all this talk about decentralizations, is this, it’s not the President’s Job to redefine the government from a Federalist to a State Republic. The President is elected to uphold the constitution, including the three branches of the government, all of which the Republicans do NOT currently control. And hence is an Impeachable offense under the constitution. And exposing this Republican Goal is not a Republican Goal.

Let me be the first to state it out loud. Impeach Bush! George W. Bush campaigned on the grounds that he could protect the U.S.A. from danger both foreign and domestic. And he has failed to live up to his responsibilities!

And in the words of Harry S. Truman. The Buck Stops Here! Mr. President.

(Update, I seem to one voice in Many, common sense seems to be more widespread than I thought)

Overall, Forrester found that Siebel continues to lead the pack by offering the most comprehensive software for enterprise-class organizations and the largest array of front-office technologies tailored to specific industry challenges and opportunities.

Having witnessed Seibel in action, I can state without a doubt this is BS, as in BULLSHIT!!!

When Seibel arranged to be used as a CRM replacement at AT&T Wireless a few years ago. The arrangement was through the CFO not the CTO, a deal that could only happen when palms are properly greased. The ‘Goal’ of the CFO pushed on the CTO was replacing the ‘Cadilac’ in-house CRM (thing) with a ‘Volkswagen’ simpler, cheaper and easier to maintain.

From the outset there was trouble. As I was working for the Infrastructure Architecture group at the time, we were brought in early to assist in the prototype environment. And in the first meeting the Seibel Tech team, and Anderson consulting it was apparent that the System the Consultants had configured, a Sun server, had never been used by Seibel, and over the next three YEARS the Seibel team ported a PC-NT application to Solaris. An operating system they had never used. The Other shoe in this story is the BS I mentioned earlier. They had Absolutely no knowledge, or understanding of the Wireless business, or any other telecommunications business model. So between the hundreds of junior programmers, and roach like consultants querying the AT&T staff about what the existing systems did, or were supposed to do the system grew and grew.

Now to make matters worse the CTO saw the writing on the wall and quit, and was replaced with an ‘Outsourcing Genius” who thought that he could outsource the entire ID department. So he brought in foreign staff to shadow the already harassed staff. This so called Chief Technical Officer was also the genius who declared that “Any computer with more than 4 CPU’s was a waste of electricity” and refused to purchase any of the Sun E10K systems that were required and order only 4 processor Sun systems to fill the place of the 8 (then 12 and then 32) E10K’s that were originally required. Yes you read that correctly 32 E10K’s!

So the original in-house CRM system that only need 8 (with 8 hot backups) HP-K Class systems was replaced with, in the end, more than 32 E10K’s (and no hot backups) bringing the total cost to about 15X (times) more expensive than the previous system. And to put the topping on the cake. After three years, when it deployed, it didn’t work. At least not as expected. It took 6 months of hourly hand feeding data in small batches to keep the thing running.

So NO don’t believe Siebel or any other BS that is being pushed about the virtues of the current crop of CRM systems.

The real business of dealing with Customer Relations are simple, know your business, know what you can and can’t do FOR your customer treat your customer in an ethical way. As noted also in blog space here A Networked World